Blue Ocean Venture Capital unveils Rs. 2 b fund for local startups

Prajeeth Balasubramaniam and Eric Wikramanayake

By Himal Kotelawala

Sri Lanka and Singapore based Blue Ocean Venture (BOV) Capital yesterday announced a Rs. 2 billion fund focused on Sri Lankan startups, with particular emphasis on homegrown tech startups with potential for regional and global growth.

A collaboration between Lanka Angel Network (LAN) founder Prajeeth Balasubramaniam, former LAN Chairman Eric Wikramanayake and Google Inc. Vice President RajanAnandan, BOV Capital plans to invest in early stage ventures at a ‘series A’ funding level – astartup’s first significant round of VC financing.

The company’s target ticket size will be in the range of LKR 100 to 200 million. The roughly $ 15 million fund will be from high networth limited partners in India and Singapore in addition to the money put in by the founding partners, and up to Rs. 600 million has already been raised at the first close. The venture capital (VC) is supported by Indian investment bank Ambit Finvest.

Sri Lanka’s competitive position in product engineering has contributed to heightened regional interest in the country’s startup ecosystem, BOV capital said in a statement.

Explaining the company’s decision to put their money on tech startups, co-founder Balasubramaniam said BOV Capital hopes to help promising tech entrepreneurs go regional by scaling them better.

“We see a lot of good tech companies in the past, like Millennium IT and Leapset, who went out there and made a mark for Sri Lanka, and we feel with our current tech entrepreneurs who are very savvy we can take them to the region and scale them better,” he said.

Sri Lanka’s economy is no longer driven by the apparel industry or the plantation sector, and given its smart and highly literate population, the country should look towards the tech industry to drive the economy, said co-founder Wikramanayake.

“If we look at where we are as a country, so many years after the war, there is still no drivers in the economy. If you go back to the ‘80s, we had the apparel industry, but if you look at Sri Lanka today there are really no drivers. If you see at a national level, the consensus emerging is that it has to be driven by innovation. The Government has also espoused that vision,” he said.

The talent of the country was not in the rubber, tea estates but in the brains of the people, said Wikramanayake, adding that the country’s vibrant tech industry, employing people with 10, 15 years of experience, is set to build some regional and global companies that can add a lot of value.

“We think it’s a very interesting time in Sri Lanka. We see this innovation-driven, value added driven economy starting to develop, and we encourage all the young startups here who need capital to approach us and see what we can do,” he said.